I had some problems with the 495 genset as well, but I kind of expected it from before I placed the order. I haven't found anyone selling this stuff who's got what we might call a real warrantee. I did pull the side covers off and I took a flashlight and a screwdriver and went looking for casting sand. I found none.

I've not had any problems with the engine, but I've had to replace both bearings in the generator head, both CTs for the microprocessor controller's current inputs, and the main breaker failed from vibration damage. I replaced the CTs with standard 100:5 CTs that I bought off ebay for $27.00, I converted the DIN rail breaker to use a standard north american stye ITE breaker and I extended the wiring harness and moved the control box off the generator head and onto the wall to prevent further vibration damage. The radiator is a cheezy all aluminum deal that spit out a rivet and developed a leak. I had it fixed at a local repair shop, but I'll replace it with a larger radiator before hot weather anyway. All these failures happened before 250 hrs of run time. I've got about 1000 hours on it now with no more problems after 250 hrs.

I'm going to put an oil cooler on it before the hot weather. I think the oil temp runs a bit on the high side, so an oil cooler would be a sensible precaution.

I figured that since it was an import generator made in China, I'd have to do a few things to it. So far it's been right on target with that. Nothing really major, but I did have to work on it a bit more than I would had I spent the extra money and got a perkins of a John Deere, so I'm not unhappy with it.

I didn't buy my 6/1 from them so I can't speak for the quality of thier listeroids. I bought mine from a guy up here in Maine that has a small warehouse full of 6/1's and a few petteroids too. He sells the Metro brand 6/1 for $875.00. He's close enough to me that I was able to drive up and pick it up. I opened the sump and poked around for casting sand. I couldn't find any. Had I found some, I'd have torn it right down, but since it was clean I'm not going to bother.

Does Synthetic oil burn as well as regular used motor oil? has anyone tried this? And what kind of mix ratio?  Does regular WMO burn as well as straight diesel with no side effects? no power losses?
My engine took about 600 hrs to break in.  There is no more drooling black slobber our of the tail pipe and muffler seams and threads on the exhaust manifold.  Also the coolant level is finnally starting to stabilize.  No more adding water/ glycol.  I was thinking of running synthetic SAE 30 for longer oil change durations but if I can't burn it after it's  lube duty, I will stick to standard SAE 30.  Also what kind of fuel preheat temps should a person have for WMO mixes?  Does it gum up the injector pump or injector at all?


Thanks for your reply, 

I've been running a 75% WMO / 25% #2 fuel oil mix in a 495 diesel with an ST-20 head. I've got about 1000 hours on it with good results. I'm putting together a listeroid now to run on the same mix. I can't tell you how well it's going to work on the listeroid, but I can tell you that it works great on the 495 engine.

I personally haven't run synthetic, but a friend of mine services waste oil burners and he tells me that the stuff just won't burn right in the waste oil burners. It's probably best just to avoid synthetic alltogether. If you get a little bit in a batch of regular WMO, don't worry about it, but don't go pump out a whole tank of synthetic and bring it home for fuel or you'll be dissapointed with the results.

WMO mix really likes to be heated. It seems the hotter you preheat the WMO, the better it works. I use a stainless steel plate type heat exchanger to preheat the mix with engine coolant before it enters my prefilters. I use a general oil filter (felt type oil burner filter) as a first stage. Then I use a 10 micron Garber spin on oil burner filter as a second stage. I put a restriction indicator guage on the Garber filter so it monitors restriction in the first and second stages.

Once it leaves the prefilters, the mix passes through the stock fuel filters on the 495 engine. I added a Carlin nozzle line preheater to each of the injector lines to reheat the mix just before it enters the injectors.

When the fuel comes out of the tank, it goes through a 3 way solenoid valve so I can select straight #2 or WMO mix. This is right before the plate type heat exchanger. I start the engine on straight #2 fuel oil, place a load on the generator, and run it until the coolant temp reaches 70C. Once it reaches temp in about 10 or 15 minutes, I switch to WMO mix. A half hour before shutdown, I'll switch it back to #2 fuel oil and let it flush the system so it starts easily the next time.

When WMO mix is burning properly and the engine is up to temp, there should be no visible smoke. If you get smoke, you're going to crap up an injector. It's not the end of the world to have to pull and clean an injector, but the best way to deal with it is to adjust your setup so that you're not making smoke in the first place. Direct injection engines are more prone to problems crapping things up than are indirect injection engines.

My 495 is indirect injection. I tried this on a Changfa 1115 with a direct injection setup. It wasn't happy. It would run good for a few days and then start smoking very lightly. Within the next day or two the smoke would increase. I'd pull the injector, clean it, and run again. I always had to keep cleaning the injector. I tried different mixes, water injection, additives, nothing improved it. With the 495 and it's indirect injection, I don't have that problem.

This genset has a microcontroller on it that monitors oil pressure, temps, current, voltage, frequency, etc. If anything runs out of it's operating window, it opens the main contactor and shuts down the engine. I've had it shut down unexpectedly and leave the fuel system full of WMO mix. I came home 8 hours later and found it this way. I've found that even in cold temps (+15F), that a little spritz of ether while cranking it will get it started cold on the WMO mix. It'll smoke pretty heavily until it warms back up and I leave it on #2 fuel oil for at least an hour when this happens to clean out the fuel system, but I've not had to purge the fuel system, ever.

I've had no problems gumming up the injector pump. I did have to pull and clean my injectors once a couple of days into testing it with straight WMO (no mix). That's not a big deal. It takes about an hour and a half to pull, clean, and reinstall them.

A word of caution on the 1115.

I bought a 1115ZS from Mohammed. I really liked the engine, but I had some problems with it. I've had two major failures. I'm not discouraged by these failures, just the unavailability of repair parts. These wouldn't have been major problems except that no one, including Mohammed, can come up with the parts I need to fix it. I've had an offer from another Changfa dealer to buy up a returned engine that the customer said "runs rough" for $450.00, but when I add the freight to that I'm only $300.00 away from the cost of buying another new one from Mohammed and shipping it to me. I'm sure that Hardy Day can get the parts for me, but again, the price of the parts vs the cost to replace the engine is a factor.

In the first failure, the governor ball retainer broke inside the engine, releasing the governor balls and tearing up the timing gears. Mohammed said he could bring the parts in from China for me, but I wanted to get it running quickly, so I got the parts that I needed from Hardy Day. I paid about $300.00 for the parts, but I had them in two days. Mohammed told me it would be a whole lot cheaper to bring them in from China, but I'd ether have to pay for air freight or wait for a container shipment. I fixed it and put it back into service.

I think the governor ball retainer failure was just a freak thing that would probably never happen again in a million years. Here's what you need to watch out for. This is what turned my 1115 into a doorstop.

The second failure:
The valve cover on a 1115 ships from the factory with no lockwasher on the one nut that holds it to the stud. Even the book shows this. During the night, this nut worked loose from vibration and emptied the contents of the oil sump onto the floor. The engine spun the big end bearing on the rod and ruined the crankshaft. I was almost asleep when I heard the BANG from the generator shed, followed immediately by a stomach churning silence.

I tore it down and got the parts list together within a couple of days, complete with part numbers, and got it to Mohammed. He agreed that it would be best to put all this on his next container shipment because the parts, including a crankshaft, were just too heavy to do this by air freight. Mohammed was unable to get the parts onto the container. At that point, I decided that I didn't want to wait anymore for another container to try again and I bought a genset with a Chinese 495 engine on it.

I put the Changfa on a dolly and pushed it into the corner of my shop. There it still sits today. Someday I'd like to get the parts and fix it because I think it's a really cool engine, but it had problems with running it on WMO blend because it's a direct injection design and even at 66% WMO I had to clean the injector at least once a week, so it's not an urgent priority for me anymore. I won't run any direct injection engine again on any alternative fuel other than biodiesel. Indirect injection works so much better for most alternative fuels.

My advice for you Changfa owners is to get another nut for the valve cover stud, install it right on top of the existing one and tighten the two nuts against each other. A 20 cent nut at the hardware store could save your engine. Since this is one possible failure out of many that could easily occur with this kind of vibration, I'll never run any engine, especially a Changfa, unattended without at least an overtemp and a low oil pressure shutdown. If you haven't already installed these things on the Changfa engines, I recommend that you turn the engine off and don't run it unattended until you do install them.

These Changfa engines create some nasty vibration. 1.2L in a single cylinder has to. It has counterbalance weights, but I think these just keep it from leaving town on it's own.  A little time and money spent monitoring this with a couple of simple sending units and a shutdown solenoid, even if was only hooked to the compression release, would have saved my engine. With all this vibration, the likelyhood of this or something else leaking is pretty high. Setting them up with an emergency stop to monitor temp and oil pressure should be a priority.

Don't read this the wrong way. I like these little engines a lot. I just think that because of the vibrations, there a few things that need to be done to make it reliable.